Welcome back to the bazaar. Again we have trawled the far-flung corners of the digital frontier and return to you well-laden with trade goods. Please peruse at your leisure. Please also excuse how unpredictable my appearances have been lately…but after all, treasures like these can hardly be expected to appear on schedule. Besides, an air of benign chaos makes me appear (and feel) more like a wizard of the digital realm and less like…
Well, a blogger.
Please enjoy.
But let’s be fair. Take a link, drop a link. The comments are open. Fill the bazaar with your choicest and weirdest futuristic finds before I pack the stall up for a while. Good to see you again, friends.
In the Headphones: Hidden Orchestra, Night Walks
Brooding and propulsive darkjazz layering whispers of ambient sounds over gently rattling drums, moody upright bass and drifting skeins of plaintive horns and strings. This one takes you on an imaginative stroll through the 3am of a retrofuture Paris, extinguished thunderstorms still gleaming on the sidewalk and the murmurs of your companion filtering through the muffling fog. Enjoy until morning.
A Practical One:
A balanced, thought-provoking and grounded exploration of what happens when AI tools enable us to stop doing menial, mechanistic work. By avoiding easy answers,
forces you to actually examine your thoughts and worldview concerning work. Is it good for humans to perform drudgery?An Artisic One: Moebius X LOTR via Midjourney
Presented with only this comment: if more machine-assisted art was this fun and beautiful, and not vaguely disturbing kitsch, we might be having better conversations about the phenomenon. Or maybe I just like Moebius’ aesthetic so much I’m blinded. Please go visit the artist on Twitter.
A Philosophical One: Can We Be Human in Meatspace?
To sit with Paul in Corinth, Crouch argues, is to realize not only that another way is possible, but that it is possible right now. It can be imagined and begun in the present, not on some distant day when we have figured out all the details, set our lives into working order, enacted the right policies and elected the right candidates. That day will never come. What we can do now is sit down, with whoever will join us, and get started.
A sober and bracing review-and-expansion on Andy Crouch’s The Life We’re Looking For, which consequently leapt onto my uncontrollably growing to-read list. A Christian technospiritualist outlook that refuses despair and recklessly enables the individual to live wisely and well? Why yes, I think this will work just nicely with my collection in this busy corner over here. Make some time to digest this one, friend.
A Vital One: The Impossible Bronze Age Mindset
The vitalists may rage, but they cannot escape the snare. After the interruption of the cross of Jesus Christ, there can no longer be a Bronze Age Mindset. Not anymore.
The author unpacks the lure of what might be called the Strong Right, while deftly exposing the contradictions and fatal flaws at the heart of the movement. I have conflicted feelings on this one, as I find several issues with the critique and think it could be tempered with dashes of Lewis, well-known lover of ancient culture who also deftly held to the True while abandoning the pagan. The question of how to answer the longings of the young (especially men) flocking to the standard of vitalism will become a defining one over the next decades. Our answers must be filled with wisdom.
A Tactical One: Defend Man With Machine
Compute must be done in service to God…One is given the choice to build machines in the service of God or machines that, for only a time, subvert Him. The latter is always destroyed by the former–I suggest you play for the winning team.
Well. The pages of The Butlerian contain manifestos too radical for me to totally endorse. However, we are often moved to action by the excesses of detailed thinkers. There are truths here that demand absorption. Here, you seem the militant type. Take this inflammatory pamphlet and grapple with it. Wrestle through your answers. Some are called to belligerence. What about you?